Address of 

Richard Henry Dana 

President of the 

National Civil Service Reform League 

at Its Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting 

Philadelphia, April 11, 1919 


NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY THE 

NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE 

8 WEST 40th STREET 

19 19 



n. •• 

A06 1 1919 


CTKMI 

,Jj 3 

Fitting Talent to Task and Making 
the Service Fit. 

Now is the opportunity of the League; now is its 
obligation. Never before has there been such a demand 
for scientific employment and management in service 
both public and private. This year it has been shown 
that the people favor our reform. In Colorado and 
Baltimore, against the opposition of both party ma¬ 
chines, the voters carried the merit system by almost 
2 to 1 in the former case and almost 3 to 1 in the latter. 

Government civil employment has grown vastly in 
recent years and it has grown not only in bulk but 
it has been entrusted with many new undertakings. 
With this growth in size and variety of enterprises is 
the demand that not only shall the overburdened tax¬ 
payer be saved from waste and extravagance but that 
in all the undertakings which so closely touch our busi¬ 
ness, our property, and our lives vfre shall be saved 
from the mistakes and failures of incompetent officials. 

Waste and extravagance there have been and mis¬ 
takes of officials not trained in their tasks have injured, 
for example, the credit of public utility corporations so 
that neither the investor is protected nor the public 
served. Such waste and injury have caused unrest and 
a distrust of government supervision and management. 

War Showed Need of Experts 

The Great War has had its lessons. It has shown 
the need of trained and expert men and the value of 
capable specialists. 

For the army and navy it was not enough that only 
able-bodied and sound-minded men should be enlisted, 
but after enlistment they had to be kept well and strong 
and to be drilled and disciplined. 

So for the civil service. The enlarged program of 
the League plans, not only for guarding the entrance 
and securing good subordinates but also after entrance 
to make and keep the service fit. 


3 


In the army and navy, as never before in the United 
States at war, has it been recognized that it is not 
enough to have able privates, but that the officers 
should be carefully selected and thoroughly trained. 
So in the civil service. It is the present policy of the 
League to extend the merit system to all higher officials 
not charged with the responsibility of settling public 
policies. We must have able management and brains 
to direct and control as well as good subordinates. 

These policies of the League, namely, the securing of 
efficiency after appointment and good management 
through capable superiors, are extensions of the original 
purpose of abolishing the spoils system. Close contact 
with and long observation of the public service have 
shown the absolute need of such innovations. 

This League is the only organization disinterestedly 
concerned with the civil service. By common consent 
it is the watchman on the walls and if it sees an enemy, 
though a new one, and blows not the trumpet and the 
people be not warned, then will their blood be required 
of its hands. We must take up new arms to attack new 
foes, if we are to be faithful to our trust. As James 
Russell Lowell says in his “Present Crisis”: 

“New occasions teach new duties: Time makes 
ancient good uncouth; 

They must upward still, and onward, who would 
keep abreast of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we our¬ 
selves must Pilgrims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through 
the desperate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s 
blood-rusted key.” 

The National Civil Service Reform League has now 
attained the age of thirty-eight. At this stage of its 
manhood it is well to review its purposes and policies, 
old and new. 

First Purpose Was to Destroy Spoils System 

The fitting of the talent to the task was originated as 
the way of ridding us of the spoils system. It was con- 


4 


ducted by competitive, written examinations of an in¬ 
tellectual character, varied, according to the tasks, all 
the way from the task of a doorkeeper to that of the 
calculator of the nautical almanac. Though mainly 
intellectual, “experience sheets” often counted in the 
marking and practical tests were added to the written 
examinations for many positions, such as bench tests 
for skilled mechanics, physical competition for police 
and firemen and dictation at varying rates for stenog¬ 
raphers and typists. 

Competition of such a character was evidently lim¬ 
ited to filling routine or subordinate positions. It could 
not test executive or organizing ability for important 
directing positions, nor would high-grade professional 
and scientific men submit to such a competition. 

The original object of fitting talent to task was to 
abolish patronage, to free us from the autocratic power 
of the political machine, and to purify politics. Yet in¬ 
creased efficiency was not wholly lost sight of in the 
propaganda of George William Curtis, Dorman B. Eaton, 
and Carl Schurz. But increased efficiency was rather 
a by-product than a leading motive. Increase in effi¬ 
ciency was predicted for the system and that predic¬ 
tion was fulfilled. For example, official reports showed 
that in the first thirteen years under the civil service 
law, in the departments at Washington three per cent, 
less persons did considerably more work than before; 
while in those same years in bureaus excepted from the 
merit system the number employed increased more than 
one third and the cost was almost doubled, without any 
corresponding increase of output. 

Merit System Saves $30,000,000 a Year 

An Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the Hon. 
Charles S. Hamlin, compared the efficiency of the 
bureaus within the civil service rules with those out¬ 
side, and using also an official report of William Wind¬ 
ham, who was Secretary of the Treasury both before 
and after the civil service law, calculated that $10,- 
000,000 a year was saved as a result of the merit 
system. Since then the federal employees under the 


5 


civil service law have increased three-fold in number. 
On this basis it may fairly be said that about thirty 
millions of dollars a year are now saved through the 
increased efficiency of the merit system, in the Federal 
civil service alone. 

The Hon. Carroll D. Wright, that eminent statistician 
who completed the United States census of 1890, cal¬ 
culated that its exemption from the civil service law 
had cost the Government $3,000,000. This was no rough 
guess, but was based on a careful and detailed stand¬ 
ardization and scientific measurements of work under 
and outside the merit system. 

In the railway mail service, where accurate statistics 
are kept, it was proved that more work was done per 
capita and with five times the accuracy after some 
few years of the application of the merit system, and 
the director under whom this application took place 
officially stated that he could not have achieved this 
great improvement excepting through the freedom from 
political appointments which the merit system enabled 
him to maintain. The amount of money saved was 
almost incredible. 

The Wisconsin game warden’s department showed a 
deficit of $7,000 the last year under spoils. Under 
“merit” it produced a net profit of over $125,000 from 
licenses and fines. 

Does the Merit System Destroy Discipline? 

Constant complaint is nowadays heard that the se¬ 
curity of tenure of the civil service laws begets dull¬ 
ness, sloth, routine and bureaucratic habits. 

But what about the spoils system? The security of 
tenure, as long as the party that made the appointments 
was in power, was even greater than it is or ever has 
been under the civil service system, and a party often 
remained in power in a city, state, or nation for dec¬ 
ades at a time. During these long reigns it was 
impossible to get rid of henchmen of party magnates. 
Let us take a few examples: The late Silas D. Burt, 
head of a large branch of the United States custom 
house in New York when under the patronage system, 


6 


discharged one such henchman for repeated intoxica¬ 
tion. He refused, at the risk of losing his own office, 
to reinstate him, but the senator of that great state 
induced the Secretary of the Treasury to reappoint over 
Colonel Burt’s head this worthless man. What became 
of the discipline of the office I leave you to imagine. 

In a Washington bureau the head of it complained 
that he was forced to keep a number of drunkards on 
his payrolls to satisfy the congressmen on whose favor 
the appropriations for his department depended and 
that he set apart a room in which those men slept off 
their intoxication, but try as he would, he could not 
get rid of them. 

In the historical instance of the 525 supernumeraries 
in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washing¬ 
ton, for whom, in order to keep them out of the way 
of the regular workers, bunks were provided, in which 
they spent the larger part of their time in sleep, Mr. 
Graves, the head of that bureau, struggled in vain to 
get rid of these useless persons through his nominal 
power of discharge. In the end Mr. Graves managed 
to call public attention to the abuse, secured a sena¬ 
torial investigation, and finally that bureau was put 
under the merit system, and the abuse ceased. 

No, whatever may be said by the careless critic, it 
is easier to remove the incompetent, the intemperate, 
and the insubordinate under the civil service law than 
under the spoils system. 

Let me give you one more instance—that of a cer¬ 
tain municipal sealer of weights and measures. The 
excuse that the sealer gave for his almost total lack 
of prosecutions and small number of investigations was 
that his deputies secured their positions by political 
methods and held them upon a political tenure. Though 
he nominally had the power, he was not permitted either 
to choose or discharge them and so could not enforce 
discipline. This was done not in the dark ages of 
American history nor in the land of the James Brothers 
outlaws but in the year 1907 of this 20th century in the 
City of Boston, Massachusetts. 


7 


Civil Service Machinery as Yet Imperfect 

It may well be asked:—if the merit system is such 
an improvement over the spoils system why has it 
failed of adoption in more than three quarters of the 
states of the Union? The answer seems to be:—while 
far superior to the spoils system, yet in comparison 
to the best privately managed business, as we must 
frankly admit, government civil service even under 
the merit system is relatively inefficient. 

To have our civil service motor adopted, it is not 
enough that it be superior to some antiquated one- 
cylinder machines still largely used in the backward 
communities. It must be up to the best models that 
can be had. 

Now, the League in its advance program advocates 
modern principles of scientific private business man¬ 
agement, and we believe they may be successfully 
adopted for the government business not only because 
we think so a priori but because in actual experiment, 
on a sufficient scale and long enough time, we have 
proved that they can be. 

Merit System Must Include Higher Offices 

The most noteworthy addition to the original pro¬ 
gram of the League is that of applying the merit 
system to higher directing officials and injecting into 
the whole of the public service scientific business man¬ 
agers and efficiency experts under the control of civil 
service commissions. 

As to the first of these it may be objected, as we 
have already admitted, that written, intellectual com¬ 
petition is not suited for determining the needed execu¬ 
tive and organizing ability for high administrative po¬ 
sitions and that leading professional men will not 
submit to such an examination. That difficulty is over¬ 
come by substituting for the written competition of 
candidates, assembled together at stated times and 
places, a competition of careers. At the risk of being 
charged with repetition, let me explain this too little 
understood form of competition. It is conducted by 
means of technically developed questionnaires ad- 


8 


dressed to the candidates as to their past education, 
training and achievements in life. These are filled out 
at their homes or offices, sworn to, and sent back to the 
civil service commission. Sometimes an essay is re¬ 
quired to go with this on the subject of the best man¬ 
agement of the office to be filled. The replies to these 
questionnaires are then checked up through independent 
inquiry by the civil service commission and information 
obtained as to the character, ability, and reputation 
from those who know or have employed these candi¬ 
dates. 

All this information is then submitted to a small 
examining board selected by the civil service commis¬ 
sion from among eminent persons of the appropriate 
profession or calling. This board grades the candi¬ 
dates and from among the highest three the selection 
is made. 

Fill $10,000 Positions by Competition 

This competition of careers was invented by the 
United States Civil Service Commission some eighteen 
years ago for the selection of the supervising architect 
for all the Federal buildings. Since then it has been 
applied to between one and two thousand different posi¬ 
tions in state, nation, and municipal service. The civil 
service commissions using this method over many years 
unanimously declare that the results are more satis¬ 
factory than with the intellectual competitions for lower 
grade places; that contrary to the public belief or 
“fallacy,” as the Federal commission has called it, 
men of high standing in their callings are ready to 
compete and the commissions have no difficulty in get¬ 
ting eminent professional men to serve on the special 
rating boards. 

I have in my hand a partial list of such competitions. 
It fills many pages and covers nearly a thousand ap¬ 
pointments so made and the salaries range from $3,000 
to $10,000 a year. In this way have been appointed 
such persons as the chief physicians of the two largest 
public hospitals in the United States, head engineer for 
the construction of the Philadelphia subway, the engi- 


9 


neer in chief for creating the great water supply system 
for Los Angeles, California, superintendents of streets, 
civil and sanitary engineers, chief librarians of large 
city and state libraries, playground superintendents, 
municipal bacteriologist, and the like. The scientific 
bureaus of the United States Department of Agricul¬ 
ture, which it is acknowledged have done the best work 
of this kind in the world, were all organized and carried 
on by chiefs selected in this way. 

While many of these experts have been heads of 
bureaus, they are not usually heads of the departments 
but are experts just under them. This is a distinct 
disadvantage for, while they are themselves skilled and 
competent, their superior, who is a political officer, is 
able to divert the contracts to where they will do the 
most good to the party, and prevent many economies 
and improvements. 

Therefore it is part of our plan to extend the sys¬ 
tem still higher. This has already been done in Los 
Angeles and from there we receive reports that not 
only are the departments free from partisan influence 
but there is more harmony and continuity of policy, 
and that the contracts are taken out of politics. 

Assistant Secretaryships Should be Competitive 
In the National Government the cabinet officers are 
policy-determining and should not be included under 
this system, but, as President Taft and his efficiency 
bureau have recommended and as Postmaster-G6neral 
Burleson urges for his department, the assistant sec¬ 
retaries or assistant postmasters-general should be se¬ 
lected by this competition of careers, leaving also a 
chance for those in the service to compete and secure 
by promotion higher positions, if they are fitted for 
them. Thus will there be, as there is in England, for 
example, a body of trained and educated men familiar 
with the history of the government departments, able 
to give advice and assistance to cabinet officers. 

Standardized Pay—Efficiency Ratings 
To come now to the second of our new policies, that 
of securing efficiency in the public service after ap- 


10 


pointment. That is to be carried out by using scien¬ 
tific business organizers and efficiency engineers who 
will standardize work and pay, secure uniformity of 
titles for the same kinds of work, get rid of or brace 
up the careless and incompetent, abolish super¬ 
numeraries, teach foremen and bureau-chiefs how to 
co-operate sympathetically with subordinates, adopt 
better organization, and use up-to-date appliances; in¬ 
deed, to carry out the plans now so much in use in 
large private business. 

The pay of most government employees, especially 
those above the lower grades, is not as high as that 
in business houses for the same employment. At the 
same time there are instances of overpayment. It is 
not for our League to adjust these inequalities but it 
is a part of our program that these business experts 
shall recommend salaries of a fair market value and 
equal for equal service, consider and adjust minor griev¬ 
ances, hear employes or their representatives as to pay 
and hours, and make scientific findings. Without proper 
pay how can the Government secure proper service? 
How many strikes, such as of the London police, the 
French government railway men, and the New England 
telephone operators, would be averted? 

Logically, these business experts for the government 
service ought to be under the control of the civil 
service commission. Logically, I say, because as the 
commissions have charge of securing efficiency at the 
entrance, they should also secure it throughout. In this 
way they can see how their tests for admission work 
out in practice. They can find the needs of the depart¬ 
ments and what the titles mean, and the efficiency engi¬ 
neers can bring complaint of inefficiency where it can 
be examined into by the commissions. Added to the 
rest is the citizen complaint feature by which any one 
can call to the attention of a commission any neglect, 
incompetence, or waste of time that may come to his 
or her knowledge. 

Chicago System Saves Millions 

This system has been tried and proved successful. 
Our Chicago friends saw the reigning inefficiency in 


II 


their city and county service, faced the problem, and 
some nine years ago instituted the system I have just 
described. In this way they saved several millions of 
dollars a year. 

Let me give a few illustrations. In an institutional 
laundry it was suggested three more employees were 
needed. An efficiency engineer and a laundry expert 
were sent by the commission to investigate. They 
changed the routing of the business, repaired one ma¬ 
chine, put in another at the cost of the annual salary 
of one person, and in the end got on with two persons 
less instead of requiring three more. 

In the great Cook County hospital was established 
a record of the work of nurses and internes which 
showed at a glance any waste of time and secured 
proper attention for the patients. 

By efficiency investigations laws were enforced. For 
example, the inspector of grain for the State of Illinois 
had passed some second-class wheat as A-l. He was 
brought before the commission on a hearing, charged 
with incompetence. There was suspicion of bribery 
but to prove that in court would have taken an endless 
trial, with the probability of failure to convict. But 
in a few hours with samples of A-l grain to compare 
with the poorer quality passed by the inspector as A-l 
and the testimony of one or two experts, the official 
was immediately put in a dilemma. He had either to 
plead inability to distinguish the grades of wheat or 
to admit that he had knowingly and intentionally com¬ 
mitted a fraud. Between the two he chose to be con¬ 
sidered incompetent and was immediately discharged 
on that ground. A new inspector was appointed on 
competition of careers and no more trouble has been 
experienced by the Illinois Board of Trade in regard 
to the grading of wheat. 

Why Veteran Preference is Wrong 

Before finishing let me touch on one other issue, 
and that is the various veteran preference laws re¬ 
cently passed or under consideration. They do not 
seem to me to convey a compliment to our army re- 


12 


turning from Europe, for such preferences clearly imply 
that our young veterans need to have their competitors 
severaly handicapped. I believe most of them do not 
need this artificial advantage. The few who do need 
it, need it because of inferior ability or training, and 
to put the inferiors in, means an injury to the Govern¬ 
ment which our boys fought to preserve. 

The returning soldiers and sailors know, too, how the 
efficiency of the civil service was necessary for their 
support when fighting. Through it the supply of arms, 
ammunition, transportation, food and medical supplies 
was obtained. When the departments were efficient 
these came through quickly and were good; when not 
efficient, there was delay and just dissatisfaction. 

Many legislators say that any one passing with lowest 
mark is “qualified” and therefore there is no harm in 
putting him ahead of others who have passed higher. 
Would such a legislator, if in charge of an office, like 
to have a strenographer who could do but 80 words 
a minute and made about 30% of mistakes put upon him 
instead of another who could do 140 words a minute 
with no mistake at all? The former would “pass” be¬ 
cause he can do stenography, though of a low order. 

Is it right to risk the health of a community to a san¬ 
itary inspector 30% of whose answers are wrong regard¬ 
ing the laws and principles of sanitation when another 
could be had who understood them both thoroughly? 

Not a Patriotic Means of Rewarding Patriotism 

Altogether, artificial preferences are not a patriotic 
means of rewarding patriotism. Let us take away every 
special disadvantage arising from absence, such as loss 
of places on an eligible list once secured, but our heroes 
who refuse charity would, I believe, prefer to stand 
on their own merits in getting into the civil service 
as they did in getting into the military. Let us honor 
them with true honor and help them where they need 
help with ennobling and uplifting service. 

The program of the League for the benefit of the 
Government is a large one. It is not merely a negative 
one, such as obstruction of the spoils system, but a 


13 


positive one—a patriotic endeavor promising benefit to 
all, the served and the serving alike. 

Arouse Business in Favor of Businesslike Methods 

We want to arouse the business men of the country 
and their organizations to work with us. To increase 
our activities, just before we entered the war the 
League raised contributions in money a fourfold amount 
and enlarged its force so to obtain publicity, field work, 
and a well organized office. 

During the first year of the war our efforts were 
diverted, at the request of the Government, to help 
in recruiting experts for its civilian employment. After 
that part cf our work was done some nine months ago, 
we began again with our efforts to extend the system 
both onwards and upwards and met great success. 
Again we appeal to our fellow countrymen, young and 
old, rich and poor, to join in one great effort both to 
purify politics and to prove that our Republic can be 
as capable and strong in its government as it is in its 
private business. 


14 










o 028 070 947 5 



